Create mind-blowing special effects skills with Learning Autodesk Maya 2008 I The Special Effects Handbook. This completely updated official Maya guide focuses on dynamics and rendering, with in-depth tutorials covering lighting, texturing, and soft body and hard body dynamics. This exceptional, full-color guide uses LAIKA’s award-winning short film Moongirl to guide you through clear step-by-step projects using the newest version of Maya. Learn how to create materials and textures, set up lights and cameras, work with shadows and raytracing, control renders, understand rendering for special effects and compositing, explore hardware and vector rendering, create caustics and global illumination effects, and much more. Check out the companion DVD for instructor-led overviews, artist interviews and scene files to get your creative juices flowing and get you started developing amazing visual effects.

profusely illustrated, and little maths needed to use

It should come as no surprise that this book is profusely illustrated. The basic abilities of Maya are extensively described. Naturally accompanied by figures showing the results of commands. You can quickly be manipulating complex textures, or tweaking shaders, and seeing the results in a tight feedback loop that enhances learning.

There is surprisingly little maths in the text. Some readers from an orthodox computer science background in graphics will be well appreciative of the depth of maths that Maya is doing, under the bonnet. But the writers of Maya have gone to considerable lengths so that their users don’t need this maths sophistication. A big broadening of the potential audience base.